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Which open source database is the best option for an accounting-related system?

Asked 2009-01-05T00:24:17.460
12

I am in the early stages of planning and designing a custom accounting application for my firm. My goal is to utilize an open source relational database for the data storage portion and I'm aware of two solid databases that are widely supported: MySQL and PostgreSQL.

For a system that will require transactions, stored procedures, functions, and security, are there any opinions on which of these two databases would be best suited for an accounting application or is there another database I'm missing?

I'm more familiar with MySQL and MS SQLServer 2005, but I'm trying to move away from the latter due to license costs.

Let me add: This is not an accounting need like Quickbooks or Peachtree. This is basically a system that handles accounting for a specific business service we provide. There are maybe two or three systems that cater to this need, are priced in the six figure range before any customization, and would require my small firm to be married to a vendor for the long-term. Thus, we are building the application in-house.

Also, while I appreciate the Buy vs. Build argument, I'd like to move away from that particular religious question because the Buy road was already taken and the vendor failed miserably. Sometimes you just need to do the job yourself and this particular project and budget warrants it.

Thanks for everyone's replies thus far.

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3 Answers

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There are open source free accounting systems. Like osFinancials. I really can't understand why you want to build your own system?

answered 2009-01-05T00:41:51.807
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answered 2009-01-05T01:38:19.243
1

For an in-house web-based accounting application, you might be better off with Gemstone as a free but not open source object database and Seaside as the web framework. Otherwise known as GLASS.

For an in-house application, you're going to be limited in developer effort. Gemstone, as a smalltalk image, provides the best developer productivity by far. Its support for migrating objects when changing their definition allows real iterative development. Seaside replaces templates by a well-designed domain-specific language for building web applications.

answered 2009-04-02T09:48:11.393

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